HIP-HOP REVIEW

HIP-HOP REVIEW; California's Alternative To Rap's Tough Core

By ANN POWERS

Published: August 23, 2001

Mystic, the California-based rapper who performed on Thursday as part of the Sam Goody ''Home Before Midnight'' concert series at South Street Seaport, has the kind of talent that creeps up on listeners on little cat feet. ''I'm about to give you a cool-out, mental show,'' she announced before her short set, apparently expecting New Yorkers to accept hard-core rap or nothing. But Mystic's tranquil music had a fiery core, and she won listeners over without having to resort to posing.

Beginning with an a cappella song about her rhyming skills, Mystic euphoniously flowed between a light soprano and a throatier rapping style. She opened with ''Ghetto Birds,'' a loving critique on the doomed materialism of the urban poor, and laced her performance with instruction about how ''the system'' keeps the disadvantaged down. Her radicalism was a welcome contrast to mainstream hip-hop's more confused political attitude.

Politics wasn't the only thing on Mystic's mind. She mourned a frustrated love affair in the seductive ''Neptune's Jewels'' and created a musical street party in ''The Life,'' a song that recalled mid-1970's Stevie Wonder. Strangely, she overlooked the most powerful song on her debut album -- ''Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom'' (Goodvibe Recordings). That song, ''Fatherless Child,'' relates her long, sad fight to love and be loved by her father, an addict who died of a heroin overdose in 1999.

Still, the 40-minute set allowed Mystic to make a shining introduction. The accolades greeting her in the media have inevitably compared her to socially conscious stars like Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu, but Mystic has her own vision.

Avoiding the spiritual trappings those artists embrace, she stressed clarity in her songs, staying down to earth as she weighed the beauty and the sorrow of urban life. Her sinuous music relayed both melancholy and hopeful eroticism; her singing communicated vulnerability, while her rapping adding sharpness. She was aided by a D.J., Al Bonds, an unflashy but gifted scratcher, and a singer, Laurina Williams, whose silky tone recalled Bob Marley's backing group, the I Threes.

By the set's end Mystic seemed confident that she had persuaded the crowd to try her supple approach to hip-hop. She suggested that her album could help alleviate the stress, and counter the hard-core sounds, that dominate East Coast life. Mystic had no need, however, to present herself as an antidote. Her music fortifies on its own terms.

Photo: The rapper Mystic performing Thursday at South Street Seaport. (Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times)